


This Blue Lawn

by lettersandsodas



Category: Mulholland Drive (2001)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-29
Updated: 2010-09-29
Packaged: 2017-10-12 07:26:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersandsodas/pseuds/lettersandsodas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.'--F. Scott Fitzgerald, <i>The Great Gatsby</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	This Blue Lawn

**Author's Note:**

> The italicized bits toward the end are not mine, as should be readily evident by how eloquent they are. They are taken from _The Great Gatsby_ by F. Scott Fitzgerald, as is the title.  
>  **Disclaimer:** Mulholland Drive does not belong to me, and I'm not profiting from this in any way. As previously stated, _The Great Gatsby_ also does not belong to me.

There's a pretty dark-haired girl at the audition who seems different from the rest. She keeps her arms pressed close to her body and her shoulders tipped forward in a way that suggests she wishes she could curl into herself, and she mouths her lines over and over again as she reads them off the page. It reminds Diane of praying.

Before she even realizes what she's doing, she's walking over to the woman, extending her hand stiffly. “Diane,” she says.

The woman looks up, surprised, but then shifts her expression to a smile. “Camilla. Nice to meet you.”

“Do you audition often?” she asks, taking a seat when Camilla gestures to the chair next to hers.

“Here and there,” Camilla says, and her voice sounds bright, unburdened. “Right now, I work at a grocery downtown, but I've always wanted to be an actress, you know?” She laughs suddenly and shakes her head. “Just listen to me. 'I want to be an actress.' Me and everyone else in this town, huh?” She chuckles again, puts her hand on Diane's knee.

Diane looks down at her hand, and forces herself to chuckle, too. “Yeah. I suppose so.”

**

Diane's audition goes fine, but nothing more. “We'll call you,” they say, but she knows enough to know that they won't.

“Well?” Camilla asks, rising to greet her when she returns.

“Oh, I don't know,” Diane says. “Tough crowd, I think. But I'm sure you'll do great.” She forces herself to smile.

“Really, you think so?” Camilla asks, and she looks so hopeful that Diane can barely stand it.

“I know so,” she assures.

Just then, an assistant calls Camilla's name and motions for her, and she smiles and squeezes Diane's hand before turning to follow.

Without knowing why, Diane hangs back, watches through the crack in the door as Camilla walks to the front of the set. It's like watching an evolution take place: Camilla's shoulders go back and stiffness gives way to gently swaying hips. The aura of slouching fades long before she starts climbing the steps to the stage.

She smiles shyly at the casting director, but there's nothing shy about her delivery. Perfect. It's all perfect: the timing, the emotion. It's so genuine.

For reasons she can't explain, Diane feels like she's been betrayed.

 _This isn't real._

 _This is the girl._

Camilla smiles at them again when she's finished.

“We'll call you,” they say, and Diane knows they will.

**

She's sitting in a diner off Santa Monica Boulevard, waiting. She looks up when she hears the chime on the door and watches Camilla walk in and scan the room. Their eyes meet, and Camilla grins and starts towards her. Her heels clack loudly against the linoleum.

“Good to see you again,” she says as she slides into the booth.

“Yeah,” Diana agrees, and forces herself to return the smile. “I was surprised that you called.”

“Well, I have good news. I talked to Adam Kesher—you remember, the director?”

Diane nods.

“Well, the girl who was supposed to play Jane had to drop out really suddenly. Adam was worried it was going to delay production, which would be awful because you know how the studios are with money right now. Anyway, he was looking for someone to replace her fast, and I told him I had the perfect person.”

Her mouth drops open. “Camilla, you didn't.”

“Of course I did. And he'd liked your audition just fine, so he said why not.” She grins.

“Thank you,” Diane says, and reaches across the table to grasp Camilla's hand, hard. “Thank you. So much. You really don't know what this means.”

“Well, it's not a very big role. She's only one of Sylvia's friends, but it pays and I thought—”

“No, really,” Diane insists. “My rent is due, and, well. Let's just say paying is all that matters at this point.” She smiles in a way that she hopes doesn't look too rueful and glances down at the table for a second before meeting Camilla's eyes again. “So thanks. If there's anything I can ever do...” She squeezes her hand, and the corner's of Camilla's mouth quirk.

“Come home with me,” Camilla says after a long moment. “Just to run some lines, help me memorize my part.” Her smile doesn't quite reach her eyes.

“Sure,” Diane agrees and feels something catch in her throat. “Sure.”

**

Camilla is straddling her lap, running her fingers through her hair and kissing her so hard that it borders on painful. She feels like she can't breathe, like Camilla's mouth has sucked every bit of air from her lungs and made everything into dizziness and soft lighting. She thinks she might love it.

“Here,” Camilla says and pulls back to grasp Diane's hands. She brings them up to her breasts. “Touch me here. Like this.”

She guides Diane's hands with her own, and Diane can feel everything, the depth of her breaths, the hardness of her nipples, the way her heart is hammering. Every little sigh and exhale sounds so harsh and clear in the quiet of the room that Diane's whole world is reduced to here, now, in this moment. There is no one else.

“I didn't know people did this,” Diane says, and it comes out choked and heavy with something and not at all what she means. “I didn't know.”

“Lots of people do.” Camilla moans wantonly and arches into her hand, and Diane looks down to see her fingers moving of their own accord, closing around Camilla's nipples and tugging at them over and over again. “People do anything in this city. Drugs—” Diane's fingers twist, just lightly, and Camilla gasps. “—alcohol, sex. Anything you want.” Camilla's lipstick-smeared mouth curls into a smile. “As long as you don't like it too much.”

Diane dips her head, takes a nipple between her teeth.

**

On set, she watches the hair and make-up lady fuss over Camilla, rouging her cheeks, applying her eyeliner just _so_ , painting her lips.

 _Those lips_. Sometimes, they're all Diane can think about. Ever since that night, she dreams in red gloss and blue eyeshadow.

She crowds around the mirror with the other actresses and tries to straighten her hair.

**

“Have you ever done this before?” she asks. She's propped up on one elbow watching Camilla kiss her way down her stomach. Her other hand is running through Camilla's hair, flexing every time she leaves another smear of lipstick on her skin.

Camilla looks up at her and smiles, tracing a red smudge with a manicured nail. “Have you?”

“No,” Diane says. She answers too quickly, hears her voice crack under the weight of all this. “No, of course not. I've never wanted—” she gasps when she feels Camilla's tongue run over the crease of her hip, feels her head fall back against the pillow.

“But you want me.” Camilla says it as even as her palms are pressing against her thighs, spreading her open. Diane can feel it somehow, when Camilla _looks_ , and, God, she's never, _she's never._ She squeezes her eyes shut, closes her teeth around her lip.

But Camilla doesn't move. After a long moment, Diane opens her eyes, sees Camilla's gaze burning into her.

 _Well?_

“Yes,” she almost sobs. “Yes, I want you. Please, just please...”

Camilla never looks away, even as she lowers her swollen, red mouth and undoes her.

**

“Why would you do that?” she demands as soon as the door to the trailer closes.

“Do what?” Camilla asks, and sits down at her dressing table to freshen her lipstick.

“Don't do that. Don't pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about,” she can hear her own voice growing lower, angrier. “Him. The kiss. Why did you want me to be there, Camilla? Why would you make me watch that?”

“Diane,” she says, her voice calm as she stands up, turns to face her. “It was nothing. It meant nothing. And I just wanted to have you around. So you could see that.” She takes a step forward, runs her fingers down Diane's cheek.

“Don't,” Diane snaps, and slaps her hand away. “I know why you did it, Camilla. And you know what I think? I think you just want to make people want you. I think you need people to want you.”

Camilla smiles dangerously and moves forward again. She's so close that Diane can feel her breath, her heat. “Maybe I need _you_ to want me,” she says, lips millimeters from Diane's.

Diane closes the distance in spite of herself.

**

She dials his number again from a pay phone a few blocks from Winkie's. It rings three times.

“I told you not to call me again.”

“I know,” she says. “But I need you to do something. I need you to make her swallow the gun.”

There's a long pause, and then a short, gruff laugh. “That's harsh,” the voice on the line tells her, but it sounds amused.

“It's not,” she says, and hangs up.

**

She feels like she's been struck. “It's him, isn't it?”

“It doesn't matter,” Camilla says wearily as she sits up, covers her breasts with her forearm.

“Of course it fucking matters!” Diane nearly screams. She pushes herself off the couch, off of Camilla, and stumbles backwards. None of this seems real. “How can you even say that?”

Camilla sighs and reaches down to adjust her skirt. “Don't be so dramatic, Diane. You knew this wouldn't go anywhere. I told you from the very beginning what this was.”

Diane shakes her head, feels hot tears stream down her face. “No. No, you never--”

“What did you think was going to happen?” Camilla asks. Her expression is one of pity, but her voice is cruel. “Did you think we were going to be together? Settle down? You know how this works, Diane. You know that can't happen.”

“It can,” Diane insists. She grabs Camilla's wrist, tries to stop her from searching for her clothing, but Camilla just shrugs her off.

“No, it can't, Diane. That's not how this ends.”

**

lt's all over the magazine rack at the corner store register.

“MURDER: Body of Young Starlet Found on Roadside.”

“Promising Young Actress Fatally Shot Only Days Before Debut.”

Something slithers and clenches deep in her gut, and the bitter, familiar tang of bile burns its way up to her throat. She swallows it down. She can't stop looking.

“Is that all?” the old woman at the register asks as she bags the bottled water and antacids.

“No,” she says, and tosses a few tabloids on the counter.

**

“I love you,” she tells Camilla as she watches her grab her top off the floor. “Don't you understand that?”

“Of course,” Camilla answers flatly, and pulls the shirt over her head. She doesn't say _everybody does_ , but she doesn't have to. “Of course I understand that, Diane.”

“I don't think you do.” It sounds so desperate and panicked as it echoes in the emptiness of the apartment that Diane wonders for a split second whether it might have come from someone else. “Everyone loves you. Everyone's always fucking loved you, so you just take it for...” She breathes. “But I'm not like them, Camilla. I love you for what you are. I'm the _only_ one who loves you for what you are.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Camilla says as she takes a step forward, extends her perfectly manicured fingers to brush a tear from Diane's cheek. “Do you really think that's what anyone in this town wants?”

**

She tosses the bag on the couch and cracks open the tabloid that promises a leaked photo of the corpse. The picture is poorly lit and printed in grainy black and white, but Diane can see it clearly anyway. Everyone can see it clearly. The ending was prescribed.

The vamp lipstick is gone, replaced by something neutral, a delicate pink, and there's blush on her cheeks. The camera flash reflected on the metal gurney looks almost like a halo.

The copy tells of a promising young woman who came to the city with a dream and a few bucks and who came so close to making it only to lose everything just when it seemed things were finally going her way.

 _He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it._

No one knows what happened yet, of course, but that doesn't stop the speculation. Diane reads of drugs, sex, gambling, mobsters. The poor, naïve girl who only wanted to please fell in with the wrong crowd, got in over her head, did things she never would have dreamed of _back in that vast obscurity beyond the city_. And somewhere along the way, she crossed the wrong person: the man who would bring about the death that would redeem her, that would wash away all the sex and lies and leave her a small-town girl sacrificed before the unceasing machinery of show business.

Camilla is the girl she said she was at the audition. She's living the Hollywood story.

Diane gave that to her.

**

“You should come to the party tomorrow,” Camilla tells her, and Diane has to cover the receiver with her hand to muffle the sound of the sob she can't quite contain. “I'll even send a car.”

For a long moment, she says nothing, just keeps her hand over the phone and tries to compose herself.

“Why are you doing this?” she asks finally, voice breaking.

“I'm not trying to do anything, Diane.” There's a short silence. “I just want to see you.”

Her breath catches. She tells herself it shouldn't.

“Maybe,” she says after another long moment.

The sigh from the other end of the line is relieved. “Just say you'll think about it, that's all.”

“I'll think about it.”

“Good. Because I worry about you, Diane. You need to get out more. Maybe meet a nice guy, someone you could see yourse—“

 _The doting best friend._

“You know that's not what I want,” Diane snaps. She wants to throw the phone, but doesn't.

She hears the hesitation in Camilla's words. “Remember what I said, Diane. About wanting.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” she demands. She can't keep the anger out of her voice.

“You know,” Camilla tells her, and hangs up.

**

She knows how this ends.

She can't stop thinking about Camilla, about her lips, her eyes, her body on the autopsy table, so perfect. She's seen _Suddenly, Last Summer_ , _The Children's Hour_ , _The Detective_. She knows what happens to the ones who can't stop wanting, who have the _thing_ inside them that Camilla put inside her.

She looks at the blue key. There's nothing left but that _thing_ , twisting and burning and consuming everything she used to be, everything she's ever had.

She runs to the bedroom, pursued by nothingness, and grabs for the gun in the nightstand.

**

There are always new beginnings in the city of dreams.

 _Silencio._   



End file.
